Disclaimer >> this is for a university essay, so obviously I'm not asking for anyone to write my essay for me :)
There is a requirement in our degree we prove we are capable of grasping some ethical ...

When considering the derivation of moral principles from a naturalistic point of view, it would seem to me that moral statements can only be conceived of in one way. That is, if we are trying to make ...

In the movie Into the Wild, the main character (Christopher McCandless) 'moves' to Alaska without most modern comforts. He wants to provide for himself by hunting and collecting eatable plants, but ...

I am a high school student who has no formal training in philosophy, so I apologize if this question seems naïve. However, it is one that I am currently facing in a life decision, and I would like a ...

I'm looking for (emphasis on) open access arguments for preference utilitarianism over hedonistic (or other alternative forms) of utilitarianism. Here's the current list (I don't have enough rep to ...

Let A be the set of possible states of the world, or possible preferences a person could have. Let G(A) be the set of "gambles" or "lotteries", i.e. the set of probability distributions over A. Then ...

While doing a Ethics for Engineer's subunit (a few months ago), I came up with the follow problem, and have been wondering about it since.
As an Engineer, you may be asked to build a water treatment ...

Frequently, utilitarian ethics are presented from the point of view of individual decision-making, that is, the maximization of the "pleasure less suffering" function which underlyies rational choice ...

J. S. Mill is well known as an intellectual father of both Utilitarianism and Liberalism, but I was thinking recently about a tension between these lines of thought and wondered if he ever addressed ...

It seems to me that property cannot be considered an intrinsic part of human nature, not in the way life is, for example. Property defines a relationship between two objects that only has a basis in ...

Take this ethical belief:
"People should act such that they, upon considering with a reasonable amount of effort related to the significance of the decision, believe that they will maximize the good ...

How does utilitarianism deal with adding more people? (Question updated to include total utilitarianism)
Firstly, suppose we are using average utilitarianism. Suppose everyone in the world is super ...

Every time I have heard utilitarianism discussed, it is generally assumed that utility should be averaged. While this sounds reasonable, the reasoning isn't particularly strong.
What justifications ...

In common parlance, pragmatic and utilitarian are very similar ways of doing things. In philosophical traditions, Utilitarians and Pragmatists are very different. In terms of understanding an action ...

Assuming we're dealing with the actions of two people based on the preferences of two non overlapping sets of affected people, other than the number of people, which methods are available to resolve ...